Mountain City

The next day came quickly and I was to leave Mui Ne. I had half an hour to wait and after observing how bored the children from the hotel were I went to fetch my pack of cards. I signalled the little girl to come and sit with me and proceeded to do my best to show her how to play snap with my hand movements. It wasn’t her favourite game, she practiced her English on me, asking me how old I was, which I said 23 and she gasped, shocked that I was that old, god this place is giving me a complex. She was 10 and her name was Dung (yes I know I don’t think I spelt that write, either that or I misheard) I tried to ask her whether she learnt English at school, as more often than not they don’t, they just learn from the tourists of the street, amazing what these little fellas can learn with no books, no teachers nothing. By the shake of her head I realized she didn’t understand the question so I continued to show her another game. She loved it, the speed wasn’t there but after a while of practicing her numbers she was really getting the hang of it, I helped her out a little but not much. She beat me all three times and laughed after every one of my defeats. Her aunt came over a few times intrigued has to what we were doing. The little girl tried to teach me one of her games, and you seriously don’t know how difficult it is to learn a game even if it’s shown to you without instructions. Obviously she won in which she laughed even harder. By this time it was time to go, I gave her the pack so she could play with her aunt, and I got on the bus to the Central highland of Vietnam.

The bus journeys are always longer then they tell you, you have to add an additional couple or even three hours on to the time that they give you. This trip from Mui Ne to Dalat took 6 hours when it was supposed to take three and a half. The bus wasn’t great, a little minibus and the roads towards the city were somewhat bumpy but its all part of the experience and another thing to add on the list of things to get used to. The views were defiantly worth it, seeing the tips of mountains surrounding you with white clouds in between, another one for the album. There are no stops normally on the day buses here, we stopped off at the top of the mountain for the toilet in which case the men were fine but the women had to find a big enough rock so as not to lose their dignity,(this is the general rule).

The bus wasn’t great, a little minibus and the roads towards the city were somewhat bumpy but its all part of the experience and another thing to add on the list of things to get used to.

It was this trip which led me to meet some guys from Bedford, a good laugh, really easy to get along with. We finally got to Dalat and after finding out where we wanted to go hotel wise, I followed my new found friends into the city centre. It was a little chilly in Dalat, not really cold, but because it’s high up, an altitude of about one and half thousand feet and coming from the coast makes it a little extra nippy on the toes, especially if you are still wearing flip flops. The hotel we rolled up in was as per usual as welcoming as it can be, bringing us up hot water for our green tea. This is where the weather started to fail us, and the rain came, we had to make some decisions.

We soldiered on for a couple of days and the next day hired out some motorbikes and took a trip to see the waterfalls and beautiful landscape in capturing Dalat, beautiful, really reminded me of Cusco, but a little more run down. That night we decided to try and forget about the rain and sample some of the nightlife they had here.  Interesting.